yeah I put a jack in every room with multimedia cable for future upgrades. Never know if I want to put in some home automation then the cabling will already be there. 2 drops per room.

I ran 1 inch conduit from my basement to every bedroom on the second floor to support A/V, data, and voice needs for the future.

In places where I know that I will need a phone and data line (like our study), I ran some cat5e wires to each of those places. Yes - wireless is great, but wire is cheap, more reliable and secure.

I would not spend the money to prewire the entire house for voice and data. Conduit is very inexpensive, easy to do yourself, supports any type of A/V or data wires, and allows upgrades to new standards that will be developed in the future.

We have cable in basically every room. We will have a Linxys wireless thingie ($50.00) in the bonus room so we can use our laptops throughout the home without wires.

We did not wire for internet in every room. Only where the main computer goes. We are already using a wireless router for the other computer in the current house and I didn't see that changing, even if we add computers. We have cable internet but no cable TV and no TV's in the bedrooms anyway (I know I am in the minority there) so I only have phone jacks in the bedrooms. That will probably go the way of the wooly mammoth eventually too but I put them in there for good measure.

I wired every room, but in retrospect I probably should've just wired the two home offices, which is where we use it. I use wireless everywhere else. BTW, if you need to be connected for work, nothing beats a hard-wired connection.

i agree with conduit. wiring right now will just add expense, and in the future, might become obsolete. look at d-link and linksys, they have some cool powerline networking gear coming out. you can add or move as necessary and it is probably alot cheaper.

We put at least one structured wiring outlet in every room. We terminated all the ethernet cables in the structured wiring panel. Hooked them up to a cheap 16-port switch and the FIOS router, and voila! Wired internet access throughout. I know wiring is expensive, but not so much in the greater scheme of things when building something as expensive as a house.

Who knows what tomorrow will bring in this fast-changing area. Our house is one-story with attic and basement. Easy to add on later IF we need something.

I have a gigabit line, and 10 megabit line and wireless 8.02.11g available in my office. Unless IÂm doing a very large download or moving disk images between machines I find my self not bothering to connect to the hardwired networks. Wireless is fine for most work including video over IP. I ran cat5e to every room in our last house. IÂm putting conduit in our new build, but I doubt IÂll need to use it.

sniffdog, how easy is conduit to DIY?

We also currently use wireless, even though our house is cat 5 wired. Seems silly, but it was easier to hook up a wireless router than to figure out how to hook the dsl modem and a router up to the cat 5 panel. Do you have a wall plate for every end point? Or do you just run it with phone lines? Can the phone lines run through the conduits, therefore hopefully decreasing labor costs, as we'll be paying to run the phone lines anyway? Thanks for any info you may have.

My biggest problem is that no matter where you put the darn jacks, you end up wanting your equipment in a corner or on a wall that doesn't have it. We're getting ready to move our home PC to a location that doesn't have a jack. We'll simply add a wireless adapter to the PC to solve our problem. That leaves numerous cable locations that are virtually unused in our 1 year old home. The only thing I'll use one of the cat5e drops for is a voip set, connecting me to the office. Conduit is a very good idea.

No phone, cable, or internet in any kids rooms. We only wired the guest room in case we ever switched that room with the main floor office. Too much technology unmonitored is not a good thing. I understand resale, I understand flexiblitly, and know the growing wireless age opens things up. But for us it was an easy decision.

We wired every room.

juniork

very easy. i purchased the conduit at home depot. the orange low voltage stuff is more expensive than the blue ENT - so I bought the blue conduit in 100' roles I think.

You nail Blue ENT boxes (which look like electrical boxes but they have punch outs that are 3/4, 1, and 1.5 inches in diameter) where you want the outlets - I used double gang boxes in most places. Then drill 1 1/4 inch holes through the sill plates to provide a path to the basement. Then pull the conduit from floor to floor. At then end near the ENT box - I attached a plastic fitting that snapped onto the conduit (which is ribbed and holds the fitting) and then that part snaps into the ENT box punch outs.

After I got everyhting in, then I used plastic clamps to hold the conduit securely in place. You should clamp it so that it does not buckle when you pull wire through - but clamps go on last.

It really is simple and now I can pull whatever wire I want - if needed. I considered running structured wire everywhere - but it is relatively expensive and most of it would never be used.

I also recommend running conduits to your attic space from the basement too.

The real reason I went with the conduit was that I wanted to put in a whole house audio system but could not afford the really nice digital systems. So I put in a fairly inexpensive analog system , running the wires through the conduit so I can upgrade later. Once I saw how easy that was, I decide to run conduit almost everywhere.

shawneeks....we're with you! Glad to see we aren't the only ones who think that way!